Sins of the Father
by LM
Summary: Captain Atom, his estranged son, and a whole lot of angst. (Complete!)
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Notes:_

The usual disclaimer. I don't own any of the character, this story is not for profit, and please don't sue me. ^_^

(A note to readers of _JLA_ . . . this is many, many years before General Eiling goes nuts and steals the body of the Shaggy Man. But it is the same guy.)

Father's Day became an official holiday in 1966. But for the purposes of this fanfic, I'm tweaking it up to 1968. Hey, what's two years? ^_~

So . . . anyway. Captain Atom. I love the character, but he always makes me so sad. But at least he gets to wear pants in this story, right? He doesn't have to steal bathrobes or anything like in _Watching the Watchers_ and that's something, right? ^_^'' 

But enough of that!

This story is dedicated to my father, who wasn't always around when I was growing up, but always wanted to be, and who I know will never read this fanfic.

  


* * *

_**Sins of the Father**_

We can draw lessons from the past, but we must not live in it. _- Lyndon B. Johnson_

  
In 1960 and at twenty years old, Nathaniel Adam was the proud father of a healthy baby boy, seven pounds six ounces. Randall, he and Angela named him, after Nate's grandfather, but of course the name got shortened to "Randy"--or "Randy-Wandy, who's Daddy's widdle twooper?" when Nate gave him his bottle. He had his mother's nose and his father's eyes--well, _Nate_ thought little Randy had his eyes, but Angela just laughed and asked if Nate was going to demand them back, then. 

Four years later, Randy was running around with the energy unique to four year olds and Nate was rocking a different baby, little Margaret, later to be nicknamed Peggy. He grinned when she cooed and grabbed at his hair, and more than once Angela threw a cushion at Nate after he sagely commented, "Ah, she has a big mouth . . . like her mother . . ." when the baby threw a crying fit.

Four years after that, Captain Nathaniel Adam embraced his wife in a tearful goodbye, clutching the letter calling him to Vietnam. He blinked back tears as he knelt to tell Randy (age eight) and Peggy (four) that he was _sure_ the war--the "conflict", his superiors insisted on calling it--would be over soon, that he would return.

Return he did.

But not until eighteen years later, after being framed for treason, used as a human guinea pig in a secret military experiment, bumped forward through time, gaining bizarre quantum abilities, and being blackmailed into serving as a government-controlled superhero. His code name: Captain Atom. He was never sure if the military realized the phonetic irony of the name. Probably not; the military machine had no sense of humor.

Displaced from his own era by almost two decades, Captain Adam found himself dazed by a world that had progressed without him. 

To him, Robert J. Kennedy's presidential run had just been announced. 

Riots and protests were breaking out on college campuses across the country in angry reply to the Vietnam "conflict".

A few weeks ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated.

A few weeks ago.

A few weeks ago, give or take twenty years. 

He felt lost. Where had his world gone, and what had it been replaced by? "Cell" phones. Computers. CDs. And what were those . . . noises . . . that people called music now? 

But the ebb and flow of society's trends paled compared to the changes in Nate's family. Angela had died . . . after remarrying. Marrying someone else! His Angela! Peggy was twenty-three and had vague, wistful memories of her father. Randy was twenty-six, had begun a military career, and detested his father for the traitor he believed him to be.

Nate, thanks to his leap through time, was still twenty-eight. 

He tried to reconnect with his children, but had difficulty even finding them, due to the fact that his commanding officer, General Eiling, was also Angela's second husband and the stepfather of his children. Nate did manage to renew his relationship with his daughter, to some extent, and she seemed happy to have him back. But Randy, when at last Nathaniel met with him, scowled and stared and called him "Captain Adam." That hurt . . . "Captain Adam", as if Nate hadn't been the one who had helped him build a tree fort and taught him to ride a bike. 

But he kept telling his son that he _was_ innocent of the treason charges, and that he would prove it. Somehow. He didn't know quite where to start, but Nate wasn't about to let that stop him. Once in a while he managed to wrangle a meeting out of Randy (although all too often under the watchful sneer of General Eiling) and update him on his progress, which was usually not much. No one remembered a twenty year old court martial. Memories had faded, records had been purged, and the few people who seemed willing to help him kept turning up dead, leaving Nate feeling guilty and depressed.

On this particular evening in early June, Nate flipped morosely through a file of tattered newspaper clippings, his fingers catching at the tattered edges of the yellowed, slightly asymmetrical rectangles of paper. There was nothing in the manila folder that he had not read a dozen times over, but he was faced with the double quandary of wanting to do something about clearing his name and not having the slightest idea how to go about it. So he sat in his apartment with the window closed on the sunset burnishing the maple trees, staring wearily at the half-memorized articles as newsprint stained his fingers.

He was about to give up for the night when the phone rang. Telephones, like everything else, had progressed to the point where Nate felt that he would never truly be comfortable around them again, and this one had a particularly piercing ring to boot. One day Nate had tried to lower the volume on it, but his experiment only succeeded in making it even shriller. As a result, he hurried over to the receiver so as to stop the damn thing as quickly as possible. 

"Hello?" he said cautiously, half expecting to hear General Eiling bark out an order for "Captain Atom" to appear somewhere on the double to clean up the military's latest mess.

"Hello." It was not the General, although the voice had something of the Eiling's coolness and arrogance in it. 

"Oh!" Nate sat up with sudden eagerness. Pinning the receiver between his head and his shoulder, he reached for the main body of the telephone and pulled it over as well, just to make sure nothing would disturb the precious call. "Hello!"

"Hello . . ." the caller repeated with less enthusiasm than before, which was saying something.

Nate realized he'd better get on with the conversation before he ended up talking to a dial tone. "So . . . Randy! You called!" 

"Yes."

"On the telephone!" 

A somewhat irritated, static-filled sigh. "Yes, Captain. On the telephone."

"Um . . ." His mind raced as he tried to think of what to say. Randy had called! He hadn't done that since . . . since . . . since 1966, when he had called the base crying to announce, through his lisp, that he had lost his first tooth. But he had brightened right up when Nate told him the tooth fairy would come at night to leave him a quarter and a new comic. Later Nate would learn how hard it was to stuff a comic under the pillow of a sleeping boy without crumpling all the pages. Randy was always _very_ insistent that his comics be pristine . . . 

"Captain? Are you still there?"

"Uh? Ah . . . yes. Yes! I'm here. And . . . you wanted to talk with me?" He couldn't suppress a rising note of hope in his voice. _You wanted to talk with me? I miss you, Randy . . . _

"Yes, well . . ." His voice was stiff, twenty-six going on fifty. "It was Margaret's idea."

Nate was on the verge of asking who Margaret was, but quickly bit back the question when he remembered it was what everyone called Peggy now. His daughter, at least, had welcomed him back. Even if she had regarded him with amused exasperation when he had given her a yo-yo. He didn't see what was so funny. She had always liked yo-yos . . . "Is Peg--Margaret--there?"

"Not right now, no."

"Oh." 

"Did you need to speak to her?"

"No, no, not really," Nate said hastily, as it sounded like Randy would welcome any excuse to hang up. 

"Oh. Well . . ." A fuzz of static as Randy drew a breath. "Margaret thought . . . that is to say . . ." A pause, then he spat out in an edged voice, "She wondered if you might want to . . . go out to dinner or something. With me. Next week." 

"YES! I mean . . . _yes._ That would be . . . yes, I'd like that." Nate worked hard to keep his voice from trembling. "Next week. Any . . . any particular day . . .?" Still holding the phone, Nate stood and walked towards the kitchen, where a calendar with a bright picture of puppy dogs was tacked to the wall.

"Whenever," Randy said disdainfully.

"Ah . . . okay. Okay. Hang on . . ." The cradle of the phone had reached its limit, so Nate carefully set it on the floor as he tried to reach the calendar. Why on earth had he hung it at the far end of the kitchen? The spiraling cord connecting the receiver to the cradle s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d as Nate leaned forward, standing on tiptoe as his fingers brushed the month of June. With some effort, he managed to unhook it from its nail. "Next week. How about . . . Saturday? Or . . ."

"Saturday's fine," Randy cut him off. "Seven?"

"Seven--yes, seven is fine."

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't care," Nate said truthfully. He would've eaten at the city dump if it meant spending time with his son. Besides, most of the restaurants he knew were gone anyway.

"Luigi's?"

"Okay. Sure. Ah . . . Randy?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

A long pause. "Thank Margaret." A longer pause. Then, more coldly than ever, "Goodbye, Captain."

"Goodbye, son," Nate said, a little bit sadly, but Randy had already hung up.

Still . . . he had called. Even if it had been Peggy's idea, he had called. So maybe . . . maybe there was hope. Nate replaced the phone and swept the time-frayed newspaper clippings back into their folder with an energetic motion. He was excited. He was afraid. What did the future hold? 

  



	2. Chapter 2

  
The metal hooks of the wooden hangers made a faint scritching noise as Nate sorted through his closet. Should he wear his Air Force uniform? Maybe just a suit . . . He pulled one out, a black one, and sidestepped into the bathroom, holding it under his chin to see how it looked. 

He could never look into a mirror without immediately noticing his hair. It lay as neatly as it ever had, carefully trimmed and combed in a slight wave, but somewhere between 1968 and 1986 his light brown locks had bleached to pure white. Whether the nature of the journey had elicited the change or whether it was an example of the anecdotal "turning white from shock", Nate wasn't sure, but it made him feel like he was seeing a stranger in the mirror. A stranger with his face.

Sort of like Randy, actually. Nate sighed and folded the suit over his arm. Randy no longer had his eyes . . .

_Stop that,_ he told himself. _He called, anyway. He invited you to dinner. That's a start._

Maybe Randy was finally coming to terms with his father, with the fact that Nate _was_ his father. Maybe they could finally get beyond the accusing glares and icy tones. Nate didn't want to think about it too much because the hope welled and pooled in the pit of his stomach, overwhelming and intense, and it hurt. But it was a _good_ hurt. Saturday couldn't come soon enough.

* * *

In the end, he left his Air Force uniform in the closet and went with the suit. Nate was tired of the government's manipulations, of running off to play superhero for them and clean up whatever self-made mess the military had gotten entangled in this week; he wanted to disassociate himself from them for just one night.

Randy, predictably, wore _his_ Air Force uniform. Captain Adam saw him, standing outside Luigi's, under the canopy over the entrance (it was raining), and he sighed.

"I'm not late, am I?" Nate asked with a smile as he drew near and closed his umbrella. 

"No," Randy said shortly. 

"Oh . . . good." (Nate already knew this, of course, having spent the past forty-five minutes staring intently at the dining room clock, waiting with nervous anticipation until he could leave.) He tried to think of something else to say but failed. Captain Adam held his umbrella upside-down, shaking sprays of water off it as he opened and closed it a few times. "Do you want to go inside?" he said at last, running out of umbrella to dry.

"Fine," Randy said, turning on his heel and marching to the doors. Nate trailed after him. Somehow it did not seem like the ideal start to the evening.

Nate had done a little research ahead of time and discovered that Luigi's, despite its homey name, was a "nice" restaurant, which meant that people fought hard for an opportunity to spend an evening there dressed in expensive, uncomfortable clothes as they ate expensive (though no doubt extremely tasty) food. Therefore, he was not surprised to find a dark-haired lady with the mysterious title of "hostess" leaning on a combination desk/podium. 

"Do you have a reservation?" she asked with a smile.

"Yes," Randy confirmed. (Nate smiled proudly; Randy was so organized.)

"And what name should I look under?"

"Adam," Nate said helpfully at the same instant that Randy said, "Eiling." 

There was a short, awkward pause. 

"Eiling," Randy repeated firmly, not looking at his father.

The hostess checked a ledger filled with cramped handwriting. "Ah, yes. Table for two, non-smoking. John--"

A fair-haired young man stepped up, took two menus from the hostess, and smiled politely at them. "Right this way, please."

They followed him up through a maze of red-clothed tables and finally up a wide set of stairs to a balcony which overlooked the ground floor. 

"Here you are," John said, gesturing towards a small circular table with two sets of silverware already laid out. "I'll be your server tonight. Would you like to start off with something to drink?"

"Iced tea," Randy said.

"Just water," said Nate.

John nodded and left, weaving through the tables on his way to fetch their beverages. Nate looked hopefully towards his son, hoping to strike up a conversation, but Randy had buried his nose in the menu. Nate sighed, then flipped his own menu open and looked over the choices.

Each entree was listed in a smooth, curving font, followed by a description of exactly what the dish consisted of (for those who were not familiar with Italian food.) Captain Adam's gaze traveled to the far right column and his light blue eyes widened at the prices. 

_Inflation,_ he hastily reminded himself. _You're not in the 60s anymore. Oh my God, HOW much for spaghetti??_ Apparentally Luigi's was even nicer than he'd thought. He scanned through the menu once or twice before settling on a simple ravioli dish which was, coincidentally, one of the least expensive items. 

Folding his menu, he set it down and looked across the table at his son. He caught a brief glimpse of hard blue eyes staring at him before they ducked behind the open menu across the table. 

_He doesn't have my eyes anymore,_ Nate thought again, sadly. _Eiling. He has Eiling's eyes._

John-the-server must have delivered the drinks, as well as a basket of fresh bread rolls (and a small plate of butter), while they had been occupied with the menus--Nate hadn't even noticed. He sipped from glass as the ice cubes clinked together, resting his chin on his hand.

After a few minutes, John dropped by the table again. "Are you ready to order, or do you need a few more minutes?" he smiled.

Nate glanced toward Randy, who still had his nose buried in the menu. "I think . . . I think we need a little more time." 

"Okay, then. Let me get you a refill, sir." He grabbed Captain Adam's half-empty glass and swooped off.

Randy still hadn't put the menu down when the blond-haired server returned. As John hurried away to clear the dishes off a table that had just been abandoned by its diners, Nate looked at his son--well, at the top of his head, anyway--with discouragement. Surely he hadn't invited him here for this? If only they could talk, just talk . . . 

Well, Randy obviously wasn't going to start the conversation, and that left the job to Nate. He picked up his water glass, then set it down again because it was making his hands sweaty. After a few deep breaths that _almost_ led to complete sentences, he took the plunge.

"This is a really nice restaurant, Randy. I'm glad you knew about it." Luigi's seemed like a safe topic to start out on. "Really great service and the food is, um, I'm sure it will be great." It had better be great, considering the price. "And I'm--" Nate screwed up his courage. "I'm glad you invited me here. Really glad."

The blockading menu across from him didn't move, but he heard a low, angry mutter of "Margaret."

"Okay . . . I'm glad Margaret asked you to invite me here," Captain Adam amended, feeling a little hurt. There didn't seem to be anything else to say on the matter, so he gulped down some ice water and hoped that Randy would pick up the conversation. He didn't.

Nate helped himself to a roll and split it open with his knife. At last he broke the silence himself. "Funny to hear your sister called Margaret; we always called her Peggy. Me and Angela. She's grown into such a bright young woman. I wish I'd been here to see it."

No reply came, so he continued. "You know, I remember her last birthday. Her fourth birthday. She was so excited. The cake--I remember the cake. Angela made it shaped like a bunny--I'm not sure how, I think she baked two cakes in those circular pans and then used one for the body and cut one up for the ears and feet. Anyway, in the cookbook they had a picture of the finished product . . . but it had coconut frosting on it. White coconut frosting. Peggy was so worried that her cake would have coconut on it too. She kept reminding us all week that she didn't like it . . ." Nate smiled at the memory as he munched on his roll.

"Mmm," Randy said from behind his menu.

"And then the presents, of course. Angela and I scrimped and saved and got her this beautiful brand-new tricycle. Red. Peggy smiled when she tore off the wrapping paper . . . but when she finished opening her presents, she burst into tears . . . Apparently what she _really_ wanted was a yo-yo. A yo-yo! I don't know why." Nate helped himself to another roll. 

"So Angela was trying to calm her down and Goz and I were running around the house, trying to find a yo-yo--which could not be found for love nor money. Finally we went and bought one off little Billy Townson next door for $5.00. Man, that was one happy kid. Anyway, Goz grabbed a piece of crumpled wrapping paper off the living room floor and we snapped it around the darn thing with a rubberband and gave it to Peggy." He grinned, despite himself. "Her face just lit up. She carried it around for months before the dog chewed it up."

He looked across the table; all he could see was a display of various pasta dishes with an inch or two of wavy brown hair visible over the top. Nate sighed, "I don't suppose you remember that, though."

Silence, then: "It was translucent plastic. Electric blue. She nearly broke my damn nose with it."

"That's right! That's right . . . she used it more like a mace than a yo-yo. I remember, she smacked you right in the face with it, started your nose bleeding. So I took you inside and got you some ice and a band-aid--"

"A band-aid wouldn't do anything for a nosebleed," Randy said disdainfully.

"No," Nate replied, remembering. "But you insisted on it. You told me they were 'good for fixing all sorts of hurts' . . ."

"Have you decided, gentlemen?" John asked, pausing beside them.

"Um . . ." Nate looked across the table. "Randy?"

"The Cannelloni al Forno."

"And I'll have the cheese ravioli, please," Nate added, handing his menu over to the waiter. John nodded and left. 

Silence fell over them again as they stared at each other across the linen-draped table, two pairs of light blue eyes.

Nervous and not sure what to do about it, Nate began talking again. Once he started, it was easier to continue than to stop. 

He talked about Peggy. He talked about Goz. He talked about camping trips and tree forts and report cards and anything he could think of. And when he had exhausted his summers and parent-teacher conferences and Christmases, he talked about suddenly finding himself in 1986, disoriented and confused and cold. (His children knew about his timeleap through almost two decades, but not his quantum abilities or superhero antics.)

The food arrived while he was describing how shocked he had been to hear about the Watergate Scandal associated with that one president, Nixon, and how he could never see the current commander-in-chief, Ronald Reagan, without thinking of the movie he had seen a few years ago (to _him_ it had been a few years ago) called _The Killers_, where Reagan had played a criminal mastermind, back when he was still an actor. 

He talked about everything he could think of, (everything except Vietnam, which still woke him up screaming some nights) and when he finally ran out of things to say, he slumped back in his chair in exhaustion, staring at the rapidly cooling plate of cheese ravioli in front of him.

Randy considered him carefully as he stabbed up the little pasta rolls of his Cannelloni al Forno. At last he said, "Don't you ever get tired of living in the past, Captain Adam?"

The coolness in his voice stung Nate. "Why do you call me that?"

"What should I call you?" He didn't just have Eiling's eyes, but a bit, just a bit of Eiling's derisive tone as well. "'Nathaniel'?"

_You used to call me 'Dad' . . ._ But he knew that Randy would push him away all the more if he suggested that, so he swallowed his hurt and said, "You could call me Nate. Lots of people called me Nate." _Angela called me Nate._

"Nate." It was impossible to tell if Randy was mocking him or simply trying out the word. Captain Adam chose to believe the latter because he didn't think he could bear the former.

For a while they silently focused on their plates, poking at their respective pasta. At last Randy said, "Margaret asked me to take you out to dinner."

"Okay . . . I kind of gathered that . . ." Nate said hesitantly.

"She's out of town."

"I know; one of her college friends in Opal City needed her to be a bridesmaid, right?"

"Yes."

"She told me she'd be gone all week, doing--" Captain Adam paused; Peggy had simply said she would be "helping out with the wedding", which wasn't too specific. "--doing wedding things."

"Yes. She said . . . since she wasn't going to be in town . . ." Randy paused, caught in some internal struggle. At last he said, with obvious effort, "She asked me to take you to dinner and find out if you _wanted_ anything. This weekend."

"If I _wanted_ anything?" he replied, puzzled, then flared a little. "I'm not _destitute,_ you know!" (In truth, although the Air Force paid for his rent, they had provided him with surprisingly little financial support; they kept their pet superhero on a short leash. But Nate had his pride!)

Randy stared at him as if he were crazy. "I . . . _she_ didn't mean anything like _that!"_

"Then . . . what?" 

"She wanted to know if you _wanted_ anything with regards to . . . with regards to this Sunday." Randy dropped each word more angrily and reluctantly than the last.

"This Sunday?" Nate repeated stupidly. 

"The fifteenth."

"Yes . . ." Nate looked at him, unsure.

"Of June."

"Okay . . ."

Randy slowly exhaled a slow, exasperated sigh. "She wanted me to find out," he practically spat, "what you want for Father's Day."

_"Father's_ Day? Are you sure you don't mean _Mother's_ Day?" Nate asked, saying the first thing that popped into his head in his confusion.

"Not unless there's something you haven't told us," Randy said drily. "Other than the fact that you're a--" He bit off his sentence, cutting himself off, and suddenly Nate realized that Randy hadn't called him a "traitor" all night. Peggy must have told her brother there'd be hell to pay if the word slipped out, as it was wont to do.

"Father's Day," Nate repeated, brightening a bit. It must have been added after he was pulled abruptly into the timestream. What a nice idea! Father's Day. Happiness welled. His daughter had made sure he wasn't forgotten on Father's Day. And his son. Sort of. Albeit with a little encouragement.

He raised his napkin and tried to wipe what knew had to be a goofy grin off his face. _("Real_ men stay in control; no one respects a man who wears his emotions like a cheap hat," his father had often said. (Nate never quite understood the part about the hat.)) "That's very considerate of y--of _Peggy."_ Nate couldn't keep the warmth out of his voice, and didn't want to. "I don't know what to say--"

Randy muttered something indistinct and impatient as he dropped his silverware beside his now empty plate. "What do you want," he repeated, a little louder, "for Father's Day?"

Nate tilted his head in thought. He wanted to stop having to fly around pretending to be a superhero (especially since the government, to his embarrassment, wouldn't let him wear pants while he was doing so), but his children obviously couldn't help him with that. He wanted a better relationship with his son, but that apparently was not going to happen, at least not tonight. He wanted to do various nasty thing to General Eiling (nothing fatal--just mildly painful; well, okay, maybe a _little_ bit more than mildly), but Randy probably wouldn't appreciate hostility towards his step-father. He wanted to spend more time with his daughter, but she had a life of her own. He wanted Angela. 

The last thought struck him with a pang. Angela. But of course no one could bring back Angela.

He was just about to tell his son that there really wasn't anything he desired (nothing obtainable, at any rate), when something occurred to him. It was Peggy, or rather her college friend, that made him think of it. "Pictures."

"Pictures?" Randy cocked his head, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"I want my wedding pictures," Nate said firmly.

"Your wedding pictures," Randy repeated. This obviously was not what he had been expecting and he kept tossing wary little glances at Captain Adam as if he thought he were joking.

Nate returned his gaze, waiting. His wedding pictures. He wondered why he hadn't thought to get them back before. Nothing could _ever_ replace Angela, least of all a bunch of photos, but at least he could remember her, laughing and vivacious, through those frozen moments of happiness. If only Randy would agree . . .

His son appeared to be in the midst of an internal debate. At last he said, "Well . . . pictures. They'll be at my dad's place."

_"At my dad's place,"_ Nate thought with a stab of jealousy. I'm_ your dad . . ._ Aloud, he said, "Do you think the General knows where they are?"

"Yeees," Randy said slowly. "But . . . he might be . . . reluctant . . . to let you have them . . ."

"But they're _my_ pictures!" Nate's voice rose, his temper flaring a little. "Mine and Angela's! _We_ hired the photographer! _We_ picked out the album!"

"Yeah . . ." The inner struggle returned for a minute, then Randy finally said, "They _are_ your wedding pictures. They're yours . . . you should have them. Okay. We've got a whole cupboard full of old photo albums at home--"

_"At home,"_ Nate thought with a touch of bitterness.

"--so they probably got stuck in there." He was silent for a few seconds, then said with a sort of stiff formality, "He's gone for the weekend, if you want to . . . you know . . . get them tonight."

Nate blinked, not having anticipated a personal invitation to raid General Eiling's house. 

Then he smiled. "I'd like that. We can find them together."

"Together," Randy said. Distaste coated his voice.

But then, Nate reflected as he counted out the tip, he had to take his victories where he could.

  


_To be continued . . . with more angst! Angst angst angst!_

  



	3. Chapter 3

  
They darted into the night, their umbrellas snapping open to the hiss of steady rainfall as they dashed for the car, Randy's car, a blue two-door parked halfway down the street. He fumbled out the keys, opening the left side first and then slipping in and leaning over to unlock the passenger's side. As Captain Adam snapped his seatbelt into place, Randy started the car, and they were off.

Neither of them spoke, but it was not quite the hostile, belligerent silence that characterized dinner, but rather a somewhat thoughtful, introspective quiet complimented by the heavy raindrops beating their tattoo on the metal roof. Squeaking windshield wipers interrupted the sluicing rain distorting the view of the black, slicked roads.

Before long, they pulled up in front of a rancher rising authoritatively over a vast expanse of neatly cropped lawn. "This is it," Randy said unnecessarily as he pulled up on the long, gravel driveway. Nate got out slowly, staring up at the house, which was all windows and angles. It was exactly the sort of place he would expect Eiling to have. He shut the car door and clomped up a set of wooden stairs to the deck, where Randy was unlocking the front door. He glanced over his shoulder, giving Nate one aloof, dubious look before striding into the hallway.

"Good thing Dad still lets me have a set of keys," he commented, hanging his rain-splattered jacket in the front closet. Nate silently slipped off his own coat as he looked around. The house sprawled magnificently, so that he could see almost all the family areas upon entering. It had everything a home should have--semi-worn carpeting in the halls, little end tables in the living room, knick-knack shelves and various pot-holders hung in the bright, white kitchen. But there was a sterility about it somehow, and the carpets were stale with the pervasive stink of cigars. He turned away from his inspection of a portrait of a rather dour woman staring at him from the wall to find Randy eyeing him as though he expected Nate to try and steal the silverware. He looked away when Nate glanced at him, then looked back again.

"My pictures . . ." Nate put a slight emphasis on the first word, feeling threatened and overwhelmed by the sheer Eiling-ness of the house and abandoned by his son.

Randy moved to the end of the hall, where a skinny, tall cupboard door had been built flush with the wall just where the corridor made a sharp ninety degree turn before heading for the bedrooms. "Probably in here."

Nate stared as his son pulled open the door. Dusty photo albums cluttered the cupboard from top to bottom, piled on boxes and bins of photographs, some still in the store-packed paper packages they'd been developed in, others simply stacked loose. _This was never Eiling's work,_ he thought, and that made him feel better.

"Well?" Randy said with a trace of impatience, obviously eager to finish the task and have Captain Adam out of the house. "Which one is it?"

Nate looked at him and wondered if he was out of his mind. The photo albums were stacked at least two deep in the closet--and "stacked" was a generous term--and although they had certainly started out in different cheerful colors, over the years they had all acquired a similar shade of dust. "I think . . . it's going to take some digging." He eyed the closet up and down. "Maybe a lot of digging."

Randy huffed a sigh through his nose and for a minute Nate was afraid he was going to order him out of the house altogether. Instead, his son glared first at him, then at the haphazardly arranged photographs. At last he said (with severe reluctance), "Go to the living room and I'll start bringing stuff out. He should never had let Peggy put them away," he added under his breath in a grumble. 

Nate couldn't help letting a little smile escape. Peggy was a good girl, he reflected as he sat gingerly at the end of a stiff, square couch. He reached over and turned on a nearby lamp as Randy drew near, with a stack of photo albums pinned under one arm and another set, balanced unevenly on each other, held against his chest with the other arm. He silently dropped them on the couch.

"Thank you," Captain Adam said, looking up at him. Randy grunted, crossing his arms as Nate reached for the first soft-covered book. He blew away the thin frost of dust that had settled on the photo album and immediately saw that it wasn't the one he wanted; but, giving in to a twinge of curiosity, he flipped it open anyway.

Nate blinked. Randy and Peggy smiled up from the page, kneeling on a familiar frayed and wrinkled picnic blanket. They were not quite as he remembered; Randy looked to be about eleven, not eight, and Peggy perhaps seven. But their faces, their grins, spoke to Nate of the Randy and Peggy he knew; not the cold, angry young man currently glaring at him or the sophisticated young woman who pitied him, but the Randy and Peggy who had loved him and looked up to him and smothered him with hugs every day when he got home, over his laughing protests. His children.

Only it wasn't him in the picture pulling the cold chicken out of the cooler; it was _Eiling._ General Eiling. _Eiling_ holding a bowl full of lime jello covered with plastic wrap. _Eiling_ sitting across from Angela. _Eiling_ laughing with _his_, Nate's, family. He felt a stab of jealousy.

But . . . on the other hand, here was an opportunity to at least observe the years that he'd missed. So he turned page after page, watching his children age by clicks of the shutter, and ignoring Eiling's triumphant (so they seemed to Nate) smiles. But the General was everywhere, and it was hard. It was hard seeing him pushing Peggy on a swing. It was hard seeing him showing Randy how to put on a lifejacket or steer a sailboat. It was _terribly_ hard seeing him with Angela, holding her hand or possessively draping an arm around her shoulders. But it was most difficult seeing them all together. As a family.

_But children need someone to look after them,_ he reminded himself as he flipped through their lives. _He was there for them, anyway. _ But it still bothered him, the fact that Eiling had been there for them and he had not.

"I don't think that's the one you're looking for, _Nate,"_ came a sarcastic voice from his left. 

Captain Adam started and discovered Randy giving him a look. "Um . . . no," he admitted, reluctantly pulling himself from the past. 

"Well . . ." His son seemed slightly mollified by this admission. "I pulled out all the white ones, anyway." He nodded to the stack of pale photo albums scattered on the couch. "I mean, I'm assuming it would be white . . ."

"It was white," Nate confirmed. _White with birds and church bells . . ._

He set aside the photo album he had been looking at and Randy casually picked it up, flicked it open. And he smiled. "I remember this . . ." he murmured, looking at the picnic. Engrossed, he slowly turned the pages and Nate took the opportunity to surreptitiously help himself to the next book in the pile. 

After a few minutes Randy settled on the floor, leaning his back against the foot of the couch, and Nate sat curled at the end of the couch, on the opposite side from his son. They stayed that way for a long time, the one reliving his memories and the other trying to capture memories that were never his, but should have been.

Eventually, Captain Adam came to a photo album that did have birds and bells on it, two white doves, in oddly stiff poses, holding up a rather limp set of ribbons with bells hanging half-heartedly off them. It was _not_ Nate's wedding album, but it was certainly _a_ wedding album. With some trepidation, he cracked it open.

Angela and Eiling. Together. In every picture.

He sighed deeply. He had known, of course. Who else's wedding could it have been, decorated with hawkish doves as it was? He made himself look at every page. At Angela and Eiling, hugging, kissing, close. Randy was in some of the pictures, taller than Nate remembered him and holding the little velvet pillow unique to the ringbearer. He would have fiercely denied that he was adorable in his little tailored dress suit, but he _was._ Peggy was even cuter, dressed in a snow white dress as she smiled, gap-toothed, clutching a bouquet of flowers. Older than he remembered by two years, or maybe three.

Nate paused on a picture of Angela and Eiling (his first name was Wade, actually, but Nate could never think of him as anything but Eiling) holding the knife together as they leaned over the white tiers of wedding cake. Angela was smiling, like in all the pictures. But her smile was not quite as Nate remembered it, not quite . . .

He asked suddenly, "Was she--?" But he cut himself off. 

Randy looked up and guessed who he was talking about. "Was she what?"

"Nevermind . . ." 

But Randy insistently repeated, "Was she _what?"_

So Nate hesitantly asked, "Was she . . . happy? Do you think?"

"Well." His son looked at him disapprovingly. "What kind of question is _that?"_

_One I shouldn't have asked . . ._ he thought. 

But Randy answered anyway, in a voice more pragmatic than angry. "Why wouldn't she have been happy?"

"Why wouldn't she be?" Nate echoed, looking at the scrapbook perched on his knees, at Angela's smile. Not that he would have wanted her to be unhappy; he was glad she could still smile after . . . after . . . _Don't think about it._

But still it hurt; it hurt. He leaned his elbow on the arm of the couch and his chin on his elbow, flipping through someone else's memories that should have been his. He could forgive Angela for being happy without him, but he did not think he could ever forgive Eiling for being the one who made her happy.

_Selfish,_ he chided himself. _At least she had somebody. She probably_ needed _somebody, after all that time. I would never have wanted her to be alone._ He turned back to watch Angela and Eiling cutting the wedding cake together. _It's terrible to be alone._

At last Nate set the scrapbook aside, stern doves at all, and began looking through the other photo albums on the couch.

Except . . .

"It's not here." Pause. "Randy?"

"Mmm? What?" Randy was only half-listening, caught up in memories of his own.

"It's not here," Nate repeated.

"Oh." He looked up. "Well . . . it's white, isn't it?"

"Yes," Nate said a bit anxiously. "White with doves. And ribbons."

"What about that one you just--?"

"That's _his."_ He tried to keep the edge off his voice.

"Oh. Well . . ." Randy relucantly set down the book he'd been looking through, spine upward to keep his place. "Hang on, I'll take another look."

He returned a few minutes later, this time carrying a plastic bag containing what appeared to be something square and blue. "Maybe this one. The top looks white."

Nate quickly worked the knotted plastic handles loose with his fingers and gingerly pulled out the contents. A white photo album nestled snugly in a somewhat worn and battered cardboard box.

"Yes. Yes!" His face lit in a delighted smile as he soon as he saw the familiar cover, soft and white and swirling with doves and ribbons and wedding bells. _We picked it out together._

The end table lamp seemed insufficient to light such precious memories, so Nate gathered up the book, box and all, trembling a little as he carefully, oh so carefully, set it down on the kitchen table and flipped on the overhead light. 

Much better. Much brighter. This was good. _Angela._ He simply sat, basking in the memories for a few minutes, as he rested his hands on the edges of the fluted cover. Then, with the light glinting off his wedding band, he pulled the white-covered photo album out (the back felt . . . different than it should?) and carefully turned back the cover.

"Oh," he said. There was a faint note of surprise in his voice "Oh."

"Find what you were looking for, Captain Adam?" Randy asked from the couch, not looking up. 

Nate sat straight in the hard-backed kitchen chair with his hands folded in his lap and his eyes downcast towards the table, unmoving. 

"Captain?" Randy repeated. Then, as he cautiously approached, "Nate?" He put one hand on the back of the chair and leaned forward to see what the Captain was looking at. "I said, did you find what you were--" His speech slowed as he came to sudden understanding. "Oh."

Nate said nothing, gazing numbly at what had once been his wedding album. The inside cover had merely been singed, but the plastic pages had melted and deformed. Some of the photos had burnt underneath the plastic while others, perhaps unleashed by a sudden gust of fire, had fallen away from the page to char independently. Nate reached up and turned the page with some difficulty. Flecks of sooty black chipped off as he separated the melted plastic with an odd, synthetic tearing sound, to reveal another collection of curled photographs scorched and blackened beyond recognition.

"I'm . . . sorry." Beneath the formality, Randy sounded embarrassed, ashamed, maybe a little bit angry. "They were yours and . . . he shouldn't have done this. I'm sorry."

Nate pulled apart a few more pages, hoping to find something salvageable. He didn't. 

"Maybe . . ." Randy pulled over the battered cardboard box the photo album had been lying in, but only bits of burnt photos slid along the flakes of ash in the bottom.

Nate looked at the box and then at the photo album, and he gripped the heat-warped pages and slowly pulled the book shut. He traced a finger over the cover, all white with raised doves and bells and ribbons. Just like he remembered. 

"Thank you," he said from a distance as he scraped back his chair. "I think I understand now."

"Captain, wait," Randy called as Nate picked his coat out of the closet. 

"I should get going before your father gets home," Nate mumbled as Randy appeared through the doorway to the kitchen.

"He's gone for the weekend," Randy said, then paused. "The album . . . it is yours . . . if you still want it. The . . . the _cover_ survived pretty well." He held out the box, with the beautiful, fluted white cover, now smeared with their sooty fingerprints. 

Nate looked at it and remembered picking it out at Macy's and shook his head no. He turned and blindly pushed his way out of the house. The electric lights broke through to low, dim darkness. Rain splattered around him in large, soggy drops, pooling in stretching puddles that reached towards one another as they took over the gravel driveway.

"Hey," Randy called from the doorway.

Captain Adam was grateful for the downpour as he turned at the foot of the slick, wooden porch stairs, grateful for the rain running in thin streams along his nose and face and cheekbones. Real men stayed in control; he did not want Randy to think he was, as his father would have said, a cheap hat. "Y-yes?" 

"You, ah, forgot your umbrella." Randy hurried down the stairs holding the long, black umbrella, still folded. "It's wet tonight," he added as he handed it to his father, then seemed embarrassed by the observation.

"Yes," Captain Adam agreed vaguely as water dripped off his nose. "It's wet." He started walking, not bothering to open the umbrella.

"Hey." Randy caught at his arm. "Don't you think--? I mean, I can give you a ride home. Nate. It's miles. Let me give you a ride home."

"No." Rain seeped down his face. Salty rain. "I . . . I can't . . . I don't . . . I should be alone. Don't you think?" 

"If that's what you really want . . ." Randy bit his lip. "He shouldn't have burned them, but I'm sure he thought . . . you've got to understand . . . you were _dead."_

"Yes," Captain Adam said dully. "I've been dead for some time now." And pulling away from his son, he began walking, letting the solid, square ranch house dim behind him through an ever-growing curtain of rain.

* * *

He awoke late the next morning feeling bleared and useless, and didn't remember the walk home, or digging out his doorkey, or where he got the empty bottle he was cradling. He stumbled to the bathroom and was sick, then crawled back to bed. 

When he next pried his eyes open, it was late afternoon and the shadows were lengthening over the young maples rustling their leaves by the window. He lay there for a while in his wrinkled suit, just lying there on his side with one hand wrapped around the neck of an empty bottle, staring at the leaves bobbing and sweeping against one another under a cool summer breeze.

_They were only pictures,_ he thought. _They wouldn't have brought her back, not really. She's gone._ And then: _Like everything else._

This did not make him feel any better. He stayed still a while longer, not really thinking of anything, but just letting half-formed thoughts wash through his head without trying to grasp them.

"Get up," he said at last, and his voice was a croak. "I should get up." He pushed himself unsteadily upright. A headache thrummed through his skull, from the alcohol or oversleeping or perhaps both. 

"Stupid," he muttered, pushing aside the bottle. He thought he recognized it now; it was the one he kept in the back of the cupboard. He rarely drank, but did like to keep a little something around for special occasions; in his defense, he thought bitterly, last night _had_ been pretty unique.

"Don't. Don't think about it." He shuffled out to the kitchen, feeling haggard and lonely. Various jars and boxes crowded the counter; victims of last night's desperate search for inebriation, he supposed. He pulled open the cupboards and replaced them as best he could; he had always had trouble putting things back the way they should go. The instant coffee, however, he left out.

He drank the coffee. He ate some toast. He sat at the kitchen table and wondered blankly what to do next. Ah, yes. Prove his innocence. As if that would change anything. He wandered in a disconsolate circle around the apartment and was just considering returning to bed as he picked up the mail by the mail slot.

The mail. Except the mail didn't come on Sundays. And the 8x11 manila envelope in his hand had neither an address nor a return address.

Which meant it was probably from Eiling or one of his flunkies. Some imperious order for "Captain Atom" to do this, that, or the other for the glory of the US Air Force. Nate held the envelope for perhaps five minutes, just looking at it. And then with a supreme act of will, he slit it open. 

He expected details on some secret assignment or a black ops mission, perhaps. He didn't expect to reach in, feel something smooth and cool against his fingertips, and pull out a full page, glossy, black and white picture. He stared at it, not quite believing, but wanting to. 

It was Angela. Him and Angela. She was every bit as beautiful as he remembered, laughing as they crossed arms to offer each other forkfuls of white, fluted cake. Joyful. That was how she looked. Joyful.

He just stood there for a while, holding the photograph, gazing at it. The edges of the negative must have been burnt away, because from the original photo the only the happy couple were left, delighting in each other in a close-singed circle. But that didn't matter. The background didn't matter. Only that they were still together somewhere.

Finally he tore his eyes away long enough to take another look in the envelope; there was something else in there, something smaller and stiffer. A card. He pulled it out. The outside displayed a painting of the ocean, all blues and greens as the water lapped against the shore and seagulls wheeled. The inside the manufacturers had left blank. But there was a hand-written message.

_Dear Nate,_ it began, but then someone had hastily scribbled out the "Dear" part. _I checked after you left, but this was the only one that was any good. I'm sorry._

Underneath, someone had taped a band-aid to the card, with an additional note hastily scrawled below it: _For fixing all kinds of hurts._

_Randall Eiling,_ it had initially been signed, but that had been blotted out too; now it simply read _Randy._

"Randy," Captain Adam said out loud, softly, and he laughed as he wiped at his light blue eyes with his coat sleeve. He carefully detached the band-aid from the card and, peeling off the plastic backing, stuck it on his hand. Inexplicably, he immediately felt better.

He opened the window and sat tinted in sunset golds and reds and purples, gazing at the proof of that one perfect, shared moment and rereading the card from his son. He sat there until the sky faded to star-dazzled black and the maples rustled softly but unseen. 

When he finally he moved away from the window, he was still smiling.

Tomorrow was another day. 

Perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing.

_The end_

  



End file.
